The boat cuts a line through the black water, not fast, not slow—just committed. The hull rises and falls with the Atlantic’s long pulse, that deep‑body rhythm you feel more than hear. Crockett stands at the console, one hand on the throttle, the other resting lightly near the wheel. The night wind moves across him like something alive. Ahead, Havana is only an idea—an outline, a temperature, a promise.

Isabella sits beside him, angled slightly toward the open water. Her hair is pulled back but still catches the salt air, strands lifting and falling. She watches the horizon the way someone watches a memory forming in real time. The city lights are distant, blurred, suspended in humidity. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to.

The boat’s engines hum in a steady, low register. It’s the kind of sound that erases everything else—thoughts, loyalties, the shape of your life before this moment. Crockett feels it happening, that drift. The world behind him—Miami, the job, the undercover layers stacked like armor—begins to loosen. He doesn’t fight it.

He glances at Isabella. Her expression is calm, but not neutral. There’s a gravity to her presence, a pull. She meets his eyes for a second, and the look is clean, unguarded. It’s the kind of look that makes consequences irrelevant.

The sky is a deep, saturated blue, almost black, with heat still rising off the water even at this hour. The stars are faint, washed out by the haze. Everything feels slowed down, stretched. Time becomes a texture instead of a measurement.

Crockett pushes the throttle forward a little. The boat responds instantly, lifting, skimming. The shoreline behind them disappears into the night. Ahead, Havana grows sharper, its lights resolving into streets, buildings, a city that breathes in a different cadence.

Isabella leans closer, her voice low, almost carried away by the wind. “It’s beautiful from here.”

He nods, but he’s watching her more than the city. The way she says it—soft, certain—makes the moment feel like it’s happening outside the boundaries of his life. Like they’ve slipped into a parallel track where everything is distilled to sensation and intent.

The boat cuts through the warm air, leaving a long wake that glows faintly under the moon. Crockett feels the shift inside himself, subtle but undeniable. A recalibration. A choice forming.

They move toward Havana, toward something neither of them names. The night holds them in its vast, humid quiet, and the world they’re leaving behind becomes smaller with every mile.

I asked AI how it did it:

1. Tone Construction: Mann’s Nocturnal Atmosphere

I built the tone around three pillars Mann uses constantly:

• Humidity + darkness + motion The Atlantic at night, the warm air, the blurred horizon — these create the “heat‑soaked nocturne” Mann returns to in Miami Vice, Collateral, Heat.
• Sensory saturation Mann scenes aren’t verbose; they’re dense. So I used tactile and auditory details: the hum of the engines, the salt air, the pulse of the water.
• Time dilation Mann slows time without stopping it. I mirrored that by elongating moments (“time becomes a texture instead of a measurement”).

This creates the signature “floating in a moment that feels outside normal life” vibe.

2. Character Positioning: Crockett and Isabella

I kept their interiority minimal but charged — another Mann hallmark.

• Crockett His identity loosens as he moves toward Havana. Mann often shows characters slipping out of their defined roles (cop, criminal, undercover) into something more instinctual. I mirrored that with lines about drift, recalibration, and the job falling away.
• Isabella She’s calm, observant, emotionally present but not expressive. Mann writes women as gravitational centers — not verbose, but potent. Her dialogue is minimal, her presence is the point.
• Their dynamic Mann uses eye contact and silence as narrative engines. I translated that into prose by emphasizing looks, proximity, and unspoken intent.

3. Sentence Architecture

I used Mann-style rhythm:

• Short declarative sentences to mimic his clipped, muscular dialogue.
• Long, flowing descriptive sentences to mimic his atmospheric cinematography.
• Alternation between the two to create that “pulse” his scenes have.

This keeps the prose cinematic without becoming purple.

4. Visual Grammar → Literary Grammar

Mann shoots with:

• deep blues
• low light
• horizon lines
• motion through space
• faces half-lit by instrumentation

I translated those into:

• “deep, saturated blue”
• “blurred lights suspended in humidity”
• “the boat cuts a line through the black water”
• “the world behind them loosens”

These are literary equivalents of Mann’s visual motifs.

5. Emotional Architecture

The emotional core of the original scene is:

• forbidden intimacy
• escape
• inevitability
• the sense that they’re entering a world where consequences don’t exist yet

I preserved that by:

• making the moment feel parallel to their real lives
• emphasizing choice forming rather than declared
• keeping dialogue sparse and loaded
• letting the environment reflect their emotional state

Mann always uses environment as emotional subtext.

6. Avoiding Imitation While Preserving Essence

I didn’t copy the film’s dialogue or staging. Instead, I:

• kept the feeling
• kept the rhythm
• kept the emotional stakes
• kept the visual palette
• wrote new prose that could plausibly exist in a novelization of a Mann film

This is how you translate a director’s style into text without mimicry.

7. Why It Works

Because Mann’s style isn’t about plot — it’s about:

• mood
• motion
• moral drift
• sensory immersion
• characters suspended between identities

I wrote the scene as if those were the primary narrative drivers, which is exactly how Mann constructs his worlds.

Congratulations.

You made it. Your Lancer made it.

Despite all the simmering fear that’s begun before last work week even started, as you triumphantly penned the conclusion to The Manual from your hotel room in Carpinteria, you are here.

Safe in Best Buy.

Fried, but alive.

I hope a Santa Barbara cobb salad awaits you. Or something even tastier.

I’m writing this from the Donahue Starbucks, and I’m sure that a day from now, when I open my laptop in the Zen Den, I may be struck by some annoying emails. But the feelings will pass.

This giant blue building is a safe haven. When you pass beneath the giant yellow price tag, you’re safe. You’re safe when you read this right now. You’re safe when you read this a month from now.

And tomorrow, you shall write like the wind.

Here is the face of the guy who finished THE MANUAL after he finished THE MANUAL.

WHAT A FINAL SENTENCE TO THE MANUAL!!!! OH MY GOSH!!! GANE KO’D Pereira, JUSTIN KO’D TOPURIA, AND NOW I KO’D THE ENDING!

I knocked the conclusion out of the fucking park.

I contemplated not having a conclusion and just leaving it finish after the final page of the mindfulness section, like a fucking asshole.

Then I tried to pen an ending out in the common area on the second story of this hotel just now, but it was too contrived and wonky.

In the silence of my room, I found the flow state. And I produced a gem from the heart.

“You’ve shared your anxiety with me, and its my hope that I’ve now shared some of what you need to begin your healing journey. shared some healing with you.

I care about you, I love you, and you are on your way.”

“I cannot wait until the N goes back to being my personal weekender. It’ll always slick and clean again. The blue paint glows. The accents are flexed like muscles. There isn’t a single germ inside that originates from anywhere other than Gleason, Taki, Starbucks, or somewhere else. The interior is untouched from Sunday night to Saturday morning. And it reeks of artificial cherry.

It sits on the curb from Monday morning to Friday afternoon resting, like a caged beast. Waiting for my resignation forms to get submitted. Waiting to be unrestrained to just Gleason, Novato, and Marin City. Waiting to be unleashed on the world.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Luke 23:34 

I ask you to forgive them, although I am choked with rage.

Have mercy upon L. For he does not know who he is, nor what he is doing. He doesn’t know what reality is. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking or feeling.

Have mercy upon J.

For the same reason.

She has to wake up and go to bed believing she’s that personality. Part of her must be exhausted by her personality, or by what she’d call: “herself.” So aliented from spirit, from source.

They feel shitty things, and I make them feel shitty things by merely being, so they act in shitty ways to try to make me feel shitty too.

O father, have mercy upon their souls. The only pure parts of them.

For the hammer will find them too.

(Figuratively).

-Karla

I was leaving USF, at the red light where Turk cuts through Arguello Blvd and turns into Balboa.

I was a bit languid with my clutch play shifting from neutral to first and sustained a honk from a new Cadillac Escalade two cars behind me. I took off with a little pep, he passed the car between us and pulled alongside me to my left.

The windows were totally tinted out.

(FINISH)

(1st to 2nd)

There is a car on my head

“Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Art: Hamlet by John Austen, 1922

Let’s go to war

The assessment client said to me in the elevator.

VA said to the OT students.

“I am a lucky guy,” he said to them.

And my heart warmed.

What a clash of worlds.

“I didn’t know where to park, so I parked down the street!”

And when I got home:

“The people in the front looked scary!”

“No, but they look like good people.”

“The reason I brought the cookies was because I didn’t like imagining these poor people expecting the cookies and not receiving them.”

As I stepped out into the bright Sunday morning light, I found, yet again, the performance blue paint glowing. All the accents were illuminated in such a muscular way.

“This car wants adventure. It wants to be driven hard to a Sunday morning brunch somewhere in Mill Valley. Where you order a giant breakfast burrito stuffed with egg, cheddar, chorizo, and avocado.

I am choosing to format this as public and not private so I can access it at work.

The book is your ticket to freedom.

Once its in editing, after your editor confirms the magnitude of how big this book will be, how well it’ll do, once you begin shopping it around to agents, you’ll be able to justify quitting your job.

(FINISH)

I would love to see the Lancer get a second life.

Imagine all the clear coat filled in, new shock absorbers installed, new, fresh floor mats, new interior lights installed (that stay on when the car is being driven, not when the doors are opened) with the ability to customize the colors, and a scent diffuser sticking out of the cupholder in the backseat. The backseat, by the way, is perfectly clean.

The trunk is empty.

The car glistens again. The tires sparkle. It looks almost new. It always smells nice. Clients feel like they’re riding in something special when they get in it.

The Lancer will get a second life. And it will see 250,000 miles.

– The world

Those are the words society will speak once I am getting seven hours of sleep a night, healing my body, healing my mind, and am on a manifestation rampage.

Workshops, book deals, patents, a TV show. Rental properties, a second car, a house house. Deltoids like the shoulders on Samus’ suit. A chest that barrels forward. A thin waist. Huge thighs. A beautiful home.

I am changing and my world will change and the lives of everybody around me will watch on in shock and awe at its proportions.

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

And its still caked in anti-freeze from New York.

Every work week ends on a Friday. And by the end of Friday, everything is okay.

Evelyn at Starbucks seems like a nice girl.

I bet she is.

So maybe I should leave her alone.

Rather than drag her into this cosmic confusion of starting something with her while my heart belongs to somebody else, and I am one-half of that person.

She seems like a nice person. So maybe she should be left alone.

The helicopter lifted me off of the rooftop of JP on January 9th, with clients and problems and resentments jumping up trying to grab onto the rails and pull it back down.

And the helicopter landed onto the rooftop of the Fairfield, Marriot in New York City’s Time Square.

That was supposed to be the happy ending.

Except, this morning it landed back on top of JP. Then Camille hit my car.

It was past 4 PM and I was on the 4th floor on a Friday walking the perimeter. I glanced outside the balcony beside 403.

A sheet of dark grey clouds hung over everything. It rained terribly.

I thought about Boba Fett from that series I read as a kid, and how it often rained on the planet he grew up on. Was it: “Kamino?” Something like that. I remember him leaving the planet a lot on a space ship.

I thought about my Veloster N as a rocket ship. One that can take me from planet to planet, from setting to setting, from one atmosphere to another.

This came up for me the next evening when I turned right from Peacock Gap onto the main street. I simply marveled at the Richmond Bridge in the backdrop of clouds and rain as I careened around that curve in the road to the highway.

4:24 PM 

Wednesday 

November 19th, 2025 

I want you to enjoy it all; every creamy bite of cream cheese, the saltiness from the soy sauce, the soft texture of the raw salmon. 

The sweetness and tang of the fried chicken on top of the brown rice mixed with salad dressing and lemon sauce. 

Enjoy mindfulness in the restaurant. And the mindful focus of the chatter. I like the moment where it produces this wordless sort of meaning. 

You deserve it. I am sitting here on the 3rd floor in the desk in the corner, dead tired, in a darkening weather with no special dinner tonight to look forward to, but a phone call with A instead. 

Enjoy the full belly. The stick shift drive home. Peering in Jack in the Box. Laying down. The meditation followed by movies and TV. 

Enjoy all of it. 

Here’s why her positive affect probably comes off as so fake. I think it was really shown around time last year, when you asked for a session (or possibly two sessions) during the week of the 4 year anniversary of your friend’s death and she snapped at you. She told you she’s not going to be speaking with you during her vacation and more, blah, blah, blah, in a really stern and forceful tone. I just stared at her, somewhat stunned, definitely hurt.

Then she became super positive inquiring about X, Y, and Z.

I struggled to say anything. It became quiet.

She continued to wear her huge beaming grin.

It goes without saying that she could not have gone from frustration to positivity within a thirty second span.

Yet her grin was beaming.

Fake.

No sincerity, no authenticity.

Plasticky, ignorant Western, run-of-the-mill, LMFT.

When its Fall or Winter and in the AM. There isn’t a hint of sun shone from the windows. It’s “anemic blue,” as you describe it.

I’d love to wake up this early on 8 hours of sleep and just watch the scene from the bedroom window.

The perforated leather ball in my grip, the tension between the clutch pedal and the accelerator in my left and right feet, getting off the line in peppy spirit effortlessly quicker than the Tesla beside me, I looked forward to it all and enjoyed it all. I finally “got it.” How people demand manual variants of automatic cars. Why people are so passionate about it. I have really enjoyed the car before, most of the time, and in some specific instances. But yesterday I started to ovwrhwlemingly objectively experience how special it is.

Add in looking forward ro driving it, etc

It’s so sleek.

… to sit across from her and be able to tell myself: “There is no separation between her and I.”

And feel it.

Last night I re-read notes I took from my last meeting with Aastha.

“You and your twin can only interact in the present moment.”

On the drive to my walk by the water, I asked myself: “Even if you don’t think its possible to be mindful all the time, imagine what it’d look like and feel like to be mindful right now.”

So I did. And it lasted longer than I thought it would. And as I sat on my bench looking at the water, amongst the breeze and the waves in the wake, I acheived presence.

The water seemed so alive. So “large.” A lot more than how it appears in the photo. I felt how I do when I’m at the beach standing before the ocean. Where the scene feels overwhelming and commanding.

It’s hard to capture what I felt, but if I had to, I guess I’d say: “Soon I went from being the person watching the water to: “just being.” But there was almost something so much more than that. More profound.

“This must be what it means to feel no separation from nature.”

That has become like a ritual at this point. Every Friday afternoon/early evening, I am both washing my hands of JP literally and figuratively.

I wish the bathroom was Best Buy themed.

Canelo is either about to get outboxed or Crawford is about to get absolutely battered for twelve rounds. This is intriguing.

“Timmy where are youuuuu”

“They might have actually got him this time.”

“Ok where tf are you tim and why are you ignoring my calls.”

“FEEED US OUR SLOP.”

“Why didn’t he post yesterday?”

“WHERE ARE YOU!!???”

“Sir, a second Seafood Tower has hit the Pig.” “Ground all podcast traffic.”

“They killed my boi”

“Oh silly me here I am on a SUNDAY…think my episode of the Tim Dillon podcast was recorded yesterday…WHAT GIVES.”

“Where is Tim, this is August 23rd and no Tim WRECKED my weekend.”

“Where the fuck is the new episode?”

“Who is taking bets on which intel agency took Timmy boy out? CIA? Mosaad? That French one that has changed its name a bunch of times?”

You were beginning to last Fall.

Daniel, think about it. Not as much daily karma, no drama, not as much stress. Not as attached to the 3D. You’ll be getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. You’ll have a ton of time to meditate.

You’re intuition will strengthen again, you’ll begin to feel her again, the sense of her absence will begin to cease more and more, then the magnetization strengthens more and boom.

It happens.

And you’re there.

“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?”

Anton Chekhov

It implies there’s an “I,” there’s a: “you,” and that “I” am experiencing this emotion for “you.”

It sounds so “high school,” so emotional, weak. Its unconscious.

It actually happened a little later than 12:30 though.

Racing a manual sports car up to Santa Rosa before work on a Friday morning, then racing back down to work in a hybrid Sonata was a bad ass thing done by a bad ass man 😉

Stick shifting, gas burning, progress note typing, ambitious glory.

See you on the other side.

As I write this, I think I may understand more of the true meaning. The ego is saying: “Do this healing,” “Do that healing.”

But what she had pointed out, what she said to me, was this: “Who said you have to do anything? The healing just happens.”

He plummets through the clouds just like I do in day dreams.

Gallows humor is a type of dark, ironic comedy that finds something to laugh about in situations that are grim, hopeless, or even life-threatening. Think of it as the kind of joke someone might crack while facing a dire circumstance—like a prisoner making a quip on the way to the gallows, hence the name.

It’s often used as a coping mechanism, especially by people in high-stress professions like medicine, the military, or emergency services. By making light of the unthinkable, it can offer a strange kind of relief or solidarity in the face of fear or despair.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but for some, it’s a way to reclaim a bit of control or humanity in the darkest moments.

This was a YouTube comment.

“For supposedly the most dangerous Man in the World, he sure does run a lot. Runs from everything. Runs from the law, runs from fights, runs from his wife etc. Stand up and be a Man. Take accountability.”

I found it interesting.

I stalled driving mom and I back from Taki. We were at the red light with Polksey on our left. I thought I put it in first but it was in neutral.

Hours later when I went to Safeway (my first/second ever errand in the N) after my walk but before Belal Muhammad vs JMD, I stalled in the Safeway parking lot once and twice at the McDonalds drive thru.

And you know what?

That’s a good thing. I am so much more comfortable driving it than I’ve ever been. So much so that I’m not afraid of stalling it nor always vigilant to keep it from happening.

a fencer without a saber

a racer without gas

a boxer without gloves

a writer without ink…

Or in this case, any energy.

– Daniel Chappell (on the realities of a nine-to-five)

https://miamiala.medium.com/whats-meant-for-you-will-always-find-you-646831fe8856

“I did another fast start in the COM parking lot. And MAN, did it feel good. I’m not just unleashing the car’s potential, it’s unleashing my potential too.”

The coffee brown Cletos felt so natural on my fists.

It’s a feeling so… “opposite” of work. So opposite of civility. Of labor. Of monotony, dullness, responsibility, expectation, bureaucracy, and office politics.

It’s empowering. Fastening those gloves on is empowering. It channels strength into my being by way of my fists.

It’s a power than almost feels selfish because it doesn’t benefit any entity aside from me.

And as April suggested, I need it now more than ever.

The moment the thin gold hand struck 5 PM brought pure relief.

No more emails, responses, pressures, deadlines, or responsibilities.

With the mere movement of a single hand on my watch, I was free. And it felt great.

Fifteen minutes later, I saw him staring forward.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked him.

“I can only imagine what you are feeling,” he said to me.

On my lunch break, after eating at the dining room table, I put in my earbuds and listened to the nap meditation.

I imagined myself floating in the night sky above that one area in Emeryville, and my body began jumping like I was falling at times during rest.

I dozed in and out of the dream, always returning to it.

It was lovely.

I have the Atrium to myself on this sunny, blue skies Saturday. So I don’t want to spend too much time reliving a work day. Especially because the point of the post is to live in the present moment.

I was beaten down by the relentless monotony of work come Friday morning. Before JP, I had to drive to the Novato office to pick up a client’s check because a colleague had asked me to.

Getting to drive to the office first rather than straight to JP was a pleasant thought, but not overwhelming or anything.

When I was stopped at a red light next to the Novato Whole Foods, I said to myself:

“Experience this moment mindfully.”

With the morning sunlight on my face in luei of a single thought, I experienced being there without my thoughts about being there, I existed without experiencing my judgements (good or bad) about the Whole Foods, street, city, or day. I simply was. I just “existed,” soaking up sunlight.

When I left the office, I was about to turn onto Diablo, but chose to drive straight past Jason’s. I was very present. Just soaking up morning sunlight. I was experiencing the sunlight and the morning, without comparing it to anything else.

I careened down Sunset Parkway and saw all the SJMS students in either blue or yellow, bringing back the warmest hint of memories from a lifetime ago.

No thoughts about what work may be like, what I may have to do, what bad things could happen.

Down Ignacio, it was nice to think (yes, I had a thought) that I’m getting paid for this.

At the stop sign intersection, I glanced into Pacheco Plaza and remembered my dad and I at that coffee shop before preschool 24 years ago.

I carried the peace and presence into the parking garage.

I took the Veloster N up and down the Boulevard tonight, for the first time ever driving it by myself. Without the fluidity of shifts, the experience is still wonky and effortful. I hope its not a matter of it: “just not being for me.”

I hope I do grow to love it.

I have to say, from right now, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

Also, NEVER TAKE YOUR CAR TO HAMILTON’S AGAIN.

“I am anxious for this car. I hope I get a chance to drive it around it once or twice,” dad said with a sincere smile.

I spent Valentine’s Day 2022 with A in Berkeley.

Come Valentine’s Day 2023, which I’m sure I spent with my family and sister, I probably dreaded it and buried myself in the false hope that she was coming back soon.

I also dreaded Valentine’s Day 2024, and feared she was with someone else.

This year, I have absolutely positively no fears or pain at all. I had no feelings around Valentine’s Day at all, really. Everything in my life is coming together. So many absolutely incredible things have happened. This job, Las Vegas, racing the super cars, receiving my Tudor Black Bay 58, BUYING MY HYUNDAI VELOSTER N. Once I fix my sleep, that will mirror in my life. No anxiety, no fear.

And maybe I needed to reach this level of unaffectedness for the path to be cleared. And that could only happen with time. But its not that it NEEDED to take a long time, but that the growth required time.

Seeing how literally everything in my life either has or is coming together for me, shows me what this will be like too.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, but especially this week while staying home from work. FINISH THE BOOK. You don’t have to be at ** for 2.5 years.

Being tucked under the blankets during the evening of a cold rainy day with my earbuds in and a meditation playing, must be the nicest thing ever.

On paper, you can go out with I, you two may hit it off and enter a serious and meaningful relationship. One where you’re in the 30s. The vibe is a more serious one compared to the connections in my 20s. The stakes are higher. You have money now, too. You travel, you grow together. She’s a household name with your family and friends.

“How’s Inaara?” The family asks.

Mom likes her.

“When do you think you may want to settle down with her?” Mom asks one day when its just us alone, cooking in the kitchen.

That’s on paper. But in reality, none of this was possible. Because the person I’m meant to be with is out there, and there’s only a little bit of growing left for us to join one another.

To feel what its like to have all the things you previously dreamed of, in the place you dreamed of them for.

“When I was a fighting man, the kettle drums they beat
The people scattered gold dust before my horse’s feet.
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine cup, and daggers at my back.” ^[1]

“Gleaming shell of an outworn lie, fable of Right divine
You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine.
The throne that I won by blood and sweat, by Crom, I will not sell
For promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell.” ^[2]

“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft, and the lie
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing
Rush in and die, dogs – I was a man before I was a king.” ^[1]

This is helping me a lot right now, because I’m growing tired of being told what to do.

A meditation in front of Gleason…

A Poltergeist pizza from Extreme Pizza…

Gladiator II

Monk: Monk and the Three Julies

And knowledge that this time tomorrow, I will be driving stick!!!

See post below. Now is the time to panic and procreate.

I am still in my 20s.

“Each day is an end in and of itself,” I’ve been saying recently. Today, I am in my 20s. Tomorrow, I will not be.

When I think about my position at JP, and the responsibility with what I’m doing, my colleague relationships, the trust of my clients, etc., it makes me feel like it belongs to a 30 year old Daniel, if that makes sense.

I have done so much in my 20s. I am days away from receiving the things I’ve spent half my 20s wanting. A Tudor Black Bay 58 (it may be in the house), a Hyundai Veloster N. This Vegas trip.

Some of my accomplishments involve surviving some of the most unexpected things.

Surviving Kunal’s death, losing Amar, fighting a graduate school corrupt beyond words.

“Where are you calling from?” And: “What are you driving right now?”

“The same car since high school. Mitsubishi Lancer. But I just got a high paying job,” I stuttered, forced into a feeling of insecurity, of having to explain myself worthy.

“Oh, congratulations.”

“Ya know, I was on the fence about buying one of your pretentious little Nazi shitboxes, but you helped me make up my mind.”

“Regardless of who I end up with… I want to make amends with her.. I want her to see that I’ve repented, that I’ve changed.”

“I know how badly you want that. And I want that for you. But it’s not today.”

I have found myself mumbling this during moments throughout my workday when I am very much feeling the 9-5.

What I want you to take away from it is that you will be a king.

In an alternate universe, you woke up on eight hours of sleep the morning after Christmas, exercised your abs, chest, showered, put on your “bird shirt” (in this alternate universe, you did receive it) made a delicious breakfast, and headed to the Sausalito Starbucks to pen the finale one of your three short stories which is getting eaten up by a publishing house for top dollar.

A delicious dinner, two hours of movies and tv in bed, an hour of meditating on the sofa (you also tranced back to Hawaii in your meditation), a long walk, shower, and an early bedtime.

One day you’ll have it all.

Do not forgot how this is the “next level” adventure, where because you have cash flow and a high paying job now, you can meet ALL YOUR CLOSEST OF FRIENDS in LAS VEGAS for your birthday week!

You are sad your 20s are coming to an end without realizing trips like this show that means nothing

Rebecca H is such a great doctor.

“I work in community mental health, so I think I got this cold there.”

“Oh! Where?”

“Johnathan’s Plzce!”

“Oh, Okay!” She said, being familiar with it.

I liked getting out of the appointment during closing, its dark out, the lights are off, and the Christmas music was playing.

I had a feeling my work days would be very diverse despite spending them, well, “working,” and that has proven to be true.

Immediately, I knew I had found a new home.

I feel the resentment, pain, and loss of a 9-5. But it helps me to think:

“This ISN’T my life. What I do in my word docs, the book, the car, the condo, whatever is about to come romantically, THAT is what my life is about. This is just pouring concrete and laying steel.”

My therapist’s smile, her absolutely beaming affect, as she saw me in my suit in an office at my job.

“Sleep has actually been going really well.”

“Oooooooh!” A face-splitting grin. “I want to hear more!”

What a blessing she is as a therapist.

I may also get the chance to do my notes remotely and may be here once every weekday. Who the f knows??

I’m not going to mourn it, just commemorate it. If it is the end, it’s time to move on. If this place to be a part of work and my every week, that’s great too.

Know that you wrote this (and are writing it) from your bamboo table against the window in your hotel room at the Equus.

The bedside lamp right behind me is off, the one on the other side of the bed is on.

Know that you’ve spent these days walking 10-12 miles through gorgeous scenery.

Recall fetching cardboard carriers of tea from McDonalds to my room, where I’d enjoy the milkiness and sweetness and steam from each cup. Even at 10 PM.

Days without a care in the world. Where its always warm, never cold. Nobody needs anything from me. I’m not supposed to be doing anything. I spend money without thought.

Think about the view from the 39th floor, and the storming sky pounding against the window pane. How exhilarating it was. And all the baddies on Bumble digging you. It can’t last forever. But its my “present,” right now. And its here for you to trance back into when you need it.

I’m leaving the Equus on my vision board, because i’m going to return here, and when I do, it’s going to be with my fiance.

“I still don’t know whether I should go to Hawaii,” I told dad.

“This job is very important, it’s the beginning of your career. You should make the decision that would best prepare you for the start of this job.”

I smiled. This was confirmation.

“I am going to Hawaii.”

One year ago, it was a cloudy November day and boy, could I feel the lack of serotonin. Depression encroached like an army of enemy forces, running silent and deep in the darkness for an ambush attack.

I was anxious to do or say the simplest of things.

From my table in the Atrium staring at the grey sky, I really wanted sushi. Jasmine and I had plans with grandma for dinner (at Taki), which were promptly cancelled because: “Grandma is having dinner with Wyatt,” Jasmine woke me up with.

My heart pounding, I drove up and down streets nearby the school looking for parking spots near the local sushi restaurants. I flipped through backup restaurants neurotically. Finally finding the sparse Japanese place past Center Point heading to Fairfax.

All the while deathly aware of how broke I was.

Reaching home felt like survival.

Fast forward a year to the day, and my cortisol levels are low, the sun and sky are bright, I’m going to book the Equus soon, go to LA, I’m planning a Vegas trip for my birthday, and about to start a mega well paying job.

Things change. We change.

“Yes, that’s true. As a twin flame, you have limited free will. But free will is not of use to you. Its of no use to your soul. Look at what your ego wants to do with your free will (date/have sex with other people). It wants to act like a rebellious child.”

“Can I just say, it’s so nice having a therapist in the family.”

However, it’s nice to know that once this job FORCES me to go to bed early, I’ll be FORCED into further (major) alignment.

“Bedtime at midnight tonight, no excuses.”

“I didn’t say tonight.”

“I think you did.”

“Let’s play it by ear.”

“It’s your treatment.”

Today I went researching new cars with my dad. The Acura Integra was much more striking in person than I had imagined. The finish of the interior was top notch. The knobs felt like expensive metals, the screen was vivid, the seat was snug in a sporty way, it just felt special to be in.

The Challenger felt crude in comparison. The interior has a dark, cool club-like atmosphere. When the salesman brought me the key, I knew to turn it on merely to hear the V8. Foot down on the brake, index finger on the ignition button. The rumble of the giant juvenile engine was felt in the chassis. Dad and I laughed.

The BMW place certainly has an “attitude,” the same one my grandma reports experiencing there in the late 90s. The salesman had strong “Marin Joe’s waiter” type vibe.

“My son just accepted a high paying job offer.”

When I told him my price range, dad says his face lit up.

When he followed the east coast douche into the used lot, I told my dad:

“The silver lining is that I can actually afford all these cars. It’s my choice what I want to drive.”

Receiving and accepting such a large job offer makes me feel so mature, empowered, respected, an important. I feel “executive,” whatever I may mean by that.

The Dark Night of The Soul

RIP

Nov 1 2020-(vaguely) October 2024

It was (n’t) nice knowing you.

My spiritual journey has given me the chance to me more childlike as I was when I was an actual child, because as a child, so much of me came from fear or aspects of my dad. I wasn’t “me.” My love for marital arts, weapons, etc., came from a response to the dangers of this world. I liked all the same things he did. But think back to all the times when you felt like you were a little version of him. And things you said and did were informed by things you’d think he’d say or do.

Getting the chance to shed the ego and rediscover my actual nature, which is that of a child, gives me the chance to do it a second time around. But not with my personality and interests being a response to society. I just get to “be.” To experience joy and love and fun.

I have learned to step outside my fear of abandonment, allowing me to see it from a third person perspective. This is a breakthrough. It’s helped me insurmountably.

Its like I’m watching myself experience this fear, as if I’m watching somebody else experience something right before me.

I see a purple midst of energy in front of him (the “me” I’m observing) which is the Fear of Abandonment. And I can see examples of all the early life experiences that caused this fear, but from this same 3rd person point of view.

All of this makes me feel so empowered to decide upon and adopt a new belief.

For years I’ve wondered, is my friend AP an average person on paper, a bad person on paper, or something in between?

Then I realized, there is no paper.

There’s just my intuition. And what feels right. And what feels wrong.

One thing I’d like to note, is that when I began doing laps on the blacktop today, I had SJ “memories” coming back, or rather, the burden to think about SJ memories. Then I realized, I don’t have to carry that burden. I don’t have to “walk down memory lane.” I can be in the “now,” in 2024, where I’m an AMFT about to get hired, I’m finishing a book, I’m evolving so much spiritually, etc.

I don’t have to carry the past with me.

The less steep and serious the punishments will be for when you don’t follow intuition. Or experiment.

This girl likes you very much, values having met you, but was just hurt by something you said or did.

And all your trauma and insecurity and abandonment fear has lurched upwards for nothing.

“You don’t get what you want, you get what you’re being.”

This feels typical: I deeply desire this County of Marin job, so much so that I’d say I feel “desperate” for it. And I know: “Nobody ever gets what they want while they’re desperate for it.”

“What can I do differently this time?”

ALIGN yourself with what you want. Part of the desperation is feeling the distance between who’re you’re being, and who the version of you is that gets this job. There is no desperation within that Daniel, because the money/status/security/responsibility of that position, matches the status/security/responsibility of who he is.

• In bed by 1:30 at the latest

• Up by 9:30 at the latest

• Consistent and EVERY night

• Run through one chapter edited every three days

• Write that short story, prepare for the next. You are launching a second career, here.

• Workout much more (build those deltoids)

• Keep mildly dieting

CP wasn’t meant to be, because it was matched with the Daniel you’re evolving out of. As was BWC. You are meant for more.

This is the path to who you want to be to attract what you want.

I read that The Matrix was being shown at select theaters to celebrate its 25 Anniversary. I wanted to go. Then I saw that the only theater it was being shown at was Northgate (which I’m afraid of), and at night time. They turn off the mall’s lights at nighttime.

I woke up the day before, thinking about being at the mall at night time.

I chose to go, but really had to mentally prepare myself.

On the drive there, I told myself:

“It’s just a shopping mall. You’re just going to see a movie, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Darkness is nothing to be afraid of. There’s enough light within me.”

“I like that,” my therapist told me the next morning. “There’s enough light inside me,” she repeated.

“I really, really, like that.”

It wasn’t that scary. And the movie was great.

Guess who just received his therapy license!!!

“In the midst of happiness or despair
in sorrow or in joy
in pleasure or in pain:
Do what is right and you will be at peace.
In life there is no greater gift than peace,
except love.
May you always have love.”

― Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me

Today as I drove past Sausalito and toward Tiburon on my way back from USF, I glanced at Mt. Tam. And I knew Lex, Tyson, and I, were on that exact time one year ago.

We may as well as scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was our Mt. Kilimanjaro. And I could see up there, into the past as if it were running simultaneously to the present.

The three of us were on the highest peak in the North Bay. They had just jumped out of an airplane. Lex was conquering his fear of heights, yet again, on the steep rock inclines and dirt paths and rickety wood bridges to the top.

Marketa messaged into the chat with Jackie and I about getting fired today from Center Point. None of that mattered from the top of our world.

I was impatient with them as they smoked their blunts.

We were soused in accomplishment, comradery, and an experience that could never possibly happen again.

Today in traffic, I saw the three of us on top of Mt. Tam. And we were happy.

“This is bringing back so many memories of playing this game with Kunal,” I said in pain, as the thumbnails of each map appeared.

“Duuuudeee. I miss that kid.” He went on to tell me how he just bought the new “Age of Mythology” game, and wanted to message Kunal to play it with him, but realized he couldn’t. 

“He’s part of the reason I am taking this job. I think he would tell me to.”

“Really?” Max asked. 

“Yeah. 85K? He’d tell me to take the job!”

Think about what Dante would do for 85K a year.

Imagine his dual shift Papa Johns/Pizza Hut days.

Imagine yourself as being an inspiration to Lex and Daren.

“It was my letting go that gave me a better hold.”

― Chris Matakas

I love you, but you’re not here and you clearly don’t want to be a part of my life right now. I have grown and evolved so much.

I have a much healthier bedtime now. I meditate every morning and afternoon (as of two days ago), making my mind so much more still and my thoughts more positive and confident.

I’m being wooed by many different clinics.

The quality of writing has been terrific.

I have a new friend in Sheila.

I’m showing up to my life more and more. I’m here for me.

The calmness of my mind has revealed to me how weak, obsessive, and anxious my thoughts about you are. I acknowledge that we will always have a deep connection, and my thoughts may, at times, naturally gravitate to you. But what I’m realizing is that where I was wrong before: Just because there’s that natural gravitation, doesn’t mean I must plan or hope or expect for you to return. Nor do I have to think about you so much. There’s tremendous room for me to machete through all these obsessive, painful, desperate thoughts. And I plan to.

By mindfully meditating twice a day (the CALM meditation on YouTube), redirecting thoughts from you, and planning for ANY happy and loving marriage in my life. Regardless of whether it’s with you or somebody else.

I’m taking my power back.

I will not be feeding you as much focus and anxiety through the collective unconscious. I hope this benefits us both.

I have a life to live. And its very exciting right now.

Take care A. K. M.

Respectfully,
Daniel

And I’m not going to let any of these temporary stresses rob the attention from such an incredible accomplishment.

One day, I will live in an organized, clutter free home…

I will have a little blue sport’s car that’s always waxed, sitting on fat, wide, grippy tires, and the engine lubricated with Royal Purple.

Money flows into my wallet and accounts like water.

I have a fortune in my bank, actually.

Margerie goes: “Wow, Daniel… I’m impressed.”

I get paid a ton to write cute little short stories. I have multiple books out. They’re all smash hits.

I’m well known in my world.

But today will not be that day. And I’ll keep working and grinding and even sometimes slaving, to reach “one day…”

This is the NECESSARY kind of change.

This is where you prove all those losers— A, M, J,—- that you ALWAYS intended to get a job, and its an important and high paying one.

This new life would nearly IMMEDIATELY upgrade you from a Mitsubishi Lancer and a quartz Seiko to a Hyundai Veloster N and a Tudor BB 58.

You can cram so much fun into your week. Massages, eating out, the boxing gym, a c partner, etc.

And eventually, she will waltz back in.

Two nights ago, I got in at 1:59 AM! Last night, 1:50 AM!

I’m growing, I’m healing, and the reality I want is coming!

I never thought I could disconnect from my relation to that /. But I did. I can feel a mental line, a meaningful, reinforced, “natural” sort of mental divider, which I don’t want to cross. But the most important thing is that I just don’t like what’s on the other side nearly as much. My mind feels so much more pure. All that dark shit, that I feel bad , it just isn’t there. My relation to / feels like its becoming a lot healthier.

Another shitty day which is made shitty because I yet again failed to abide by my sleep schedule.

“My job is to give you homework. Your job is to take it seriously and do it,” she said firmly. Mom-like.

I thought I was doing it. I really, truly, thought I was doing it. But I wasn’t.

You know what, you’re smart enough and aware enough to know that you weren’t doing it. Shut the fuck up.

Heaven awaits on one side of this problem, hell on the other.

An award winning book, tons of writing awards, abs and a huge chest, sparring matches against champions in different countries, money. A house in Bel Marin Keys.

In Hell, I’ll be getting fired from my first AMFT job, continued hair loss, abdominal weight gain, the continued absence of her, etc. The spawning of new enemies, new crushing situations.

In between, this purgatory of dissatisfaction and my spirit clawing for more.

It’s so flat and ugly. Boring, basic buildings sprout up in worn, erosive, concrete to the same feeling as Rohnert Park. It’s just a lame place. Twice the price to visit a NEW, ACTUAL place is worth it.

Daniel of the future, I fucking mean it. There’s no reason to come visit Canada… At all. Lex and Daren are not your responsibility.

The comradery is good, as are the late night adventures, but then they can come here.

It’s really exciting to have met a boxer who’s going into a fight, and to have skin in the game. A stake in the outcome.

“Getting frustrated and riled up at nighttime isn’t going to help you fall asleep, its going to hurt.”

“1 or 2 AM is not an appropriate time to think about dress shoes or leaving another post-it note.”

“Daniel, that’s a lot of caffeine.”

And I have so much more money coming. I usually come here to vent, but not today. I am just so grateful. I am utterly thankful to the divine, my angel guides, God, and the universe.

Truly.

Thank you.

Never take for granted being able to fill up your gas tank on your own, buying new top-of-the-line Asics as soon as your pair wears, being able to eat out when you want, planned vacations, etc.

Never forget the awful cringe feeling of asking grandma for gas money or a $200 check.

Sometimes I feel like a stranger to my own life.

“Betrayed and wronged in everything,
I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king,
And seek some spot unpeopled and apart
Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.”
― Molière, The Misanthrope

“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Villette

“What hurts so bad about youth isn’t the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It’s the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.”- Mary Karr

“I saw everything in the world build up and then everything in the world fall down again.”
― Marina Keegan

There is so much light and love in my book and my intentions that it’s Kell and his dad who made the mistake, not me. And I really, truly feel this.

What the fuck do I do with all this fandom? With all this support? All these dreamy notions of meeting him, befriending him, facing him… him and Phil meeting at my wedding. And for what? For fucking what? For rejection? For embarrassment?

The rational mind kicks in: “Just because you are his fan doesn’t mean he has to…”

Blah, blah, blah. Shut the fuck up.

Ouch. It hit like a break up.

“If I could get a call back from Kell Brook’s manager versus “her,” I would choose the manager. That’s what I had been saying.

What I want to remember from this day….

I want to remember the “hookie” feeling of going boating then to the movies on a weekday afternoon with my dad and uncle.

And the mindful, conscious, laughter when he and my dad were talking about “dinging” you know who.

Ordering Nick the Greek on the ride to the movies.

“No tomatoes on the chicken gyro.”

“I’ll take your tomatoes,” my uncle said.

“Add my tomatoes to veggie gyro,” I said.

And he either did finger guns or snapped his fingers or said: “That’s right…” something like that.

Because I can’t get my hands on a Hyundai Veloster N in time for my drive tomorrow…

Nor a hot Persian grad student.

I don’t know what this will feel like. That’s in part why I’m doing it. I’m not sure how much it will lend to the story. One must assume it’d have to lend SOMETHING. If anything, its a colorful thing to mention when you publish this story or are on Joe Rogan talking about your love of writing.

WAIT. FACKING HELL. I’m gonna have to do this all again when I actually get the N, won’t I?

“If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than as a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all.”

“I am not how you think I am. You’re how you think I am.”

“Judgement is easy. The hard part is realizing that’s where you hide.”

“For the Alchemist…the one primarily in need of redemption is not man… but, the Deity…who is lost and sleeping in matter.” ~ Carl Gustav Jung.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1613502905563997/permalink/3719003141680619/?ref=share&mibextid=NOb6eG

“To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48).”

His advice is valid and sound, but his life is so hedonistic, loveless, and low, that you either do have to always keep him at bay or eventually cut him off. For your own sake.

This isn’t judgmental. His energy is just so low. He’s actually least toxic when he’s suffering. You probably won’t be able to continue with him in the same way you couldn’t you aunt and “honorary cousin.”

But we shall see.

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and can lead to rebirth.”​

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.” ― John Ruskin

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.” ― Emily Brontë

“In the battle of egos, both competitors lose.”- Robin Sharma

“If I only had one sermon to preach, it would be against pride.”- GK Chesterton

I barely, just barely, have enough awareness to realize that without being aware of it, I’d feed this pride of mine to no end, losing friends and family as collateral along the way. All self-righteous in a castle of nothingness.

“He can reach out back to me first.”

“If she has any future with him, she’ll lose me as a brother.”

“I will cut you out of my life faster than I did our aunt.”

“This house is so dysfunctional. I am leaving the first chance I get.”

“Just bail from a threat? I hate bailing. I loathe that feeling. It makes me feel like a bitch.”

“Amar, I don’t need you.”

“I’m glad you’re gone.”

“Do whatever you want.”

It hit me on the R bridge this morning on my way to the WC.

Not just for B, but D and especially A.

It isn’t about what they’ve each done, respectively. It’s about my feelings towards them, justified or not, snowballing into something so much larger than them and taking on its own life.

And what its snowballed into attracts more of the same. It brings in evil. It messes up special and important things.

It brings humbling.

It delays the future I want.

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.”

“Honorary cousin,” Yeah fucking right…

Lessons learned from a mentally ill man, in a prolonged manic episode, with multiple addictions, beating the P4P King with 4 knockdowns….

Nothing is set in stone.

I absolutely will become a millionaire off of my book.

My life will become a party.

Tons of champions will be on the cover of my book.

I’ll have a huge gorgeous house.

I’m going to get my Hyundai Veloster N… with fat racing tires.

I’m going to be such a successful writer, that me going off to write for the day is encouraged by everyone in my life.

There are so many more.

I felt like I was moved via sling shot from this festering highly karmic swap of dysfunctional dynamics and ugly personalities and oppressive environments, through the sky, through every later of the atmosphere into a boxing ring in the thermosphere.

Kell is across from me and we’re surrounded by the deep rich heavenly blue of a negotiated liaison between earth and space.

“You ain’t want it, boi!”

I smile.

And we charge at each other.

I fight for peace. I fight in hopes that one day I won’t have to, that a paradise on earth awaits me, and that’s its as beautiful (and more) than the nicest days of my life so far.

The same universe that gave me the problem punishes me for having it.

“We are the gods of the atoms that make up ourselves but we are also the atoms of the gods that make up the universe.”

• I cannot live with hate in my heart. Not anymore. The thing I hate them for is not worth hate. It’s not worth me being brought down that low and experiencing “that.”
• Self-love can’t be a causality of many responsibilities. I can’t be “okay” not getting sleep.
• The people I see the negative in, also have love inside them too.
• Its the end of the road for my sleep behavior. The universe will no longer accept it from me.
• I have heaven awaiting me if I heal my sleep disorder, hell awaiting me if I don’t.

I can’t believe how unimaginative and downright lazy these p*******ers are

blinded, red faced, severed head warrior

I’m moving on. I’ve been told by priestesses and the equivalent of prophets and sages that if I’m to evolve into my best self, you’ll return into my life mirroring my best self as your best self.

I see no proof of that.

I still believe it, but from where I am, it just feels like it doesn’t matter.

I see no inkling of your presence in my life.

No contact at all.

I have a life to live.

I am moving on.

I want a girlfriend and I’m ready for one.

What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.”

― Haruki Murakami

If you ever read this, I’m sorry.

I wish that I got to enjoy grad school. That is all. I think there should be an element of joy to learning, and unfortunately, due to what happened and how poorly it was handled, that joy was taken. Things are so dysfunctional, so outlandish, that right now I may be a graduated student or I may not be. Schrodinger’s Diploma.

There was a tremendous amount of joy during my time at UC Davis. The memories are lined in gold. Here… not so much.

For 70K, I wish I got to enjoy this.

I received an email today from my a asking why I haven’t enroll in c. I had good reason not to, as an attempt to escape this hellish place once and for all. But on paper, i’m sure it will sound stupid.

I began to feel guilty, knowing they (them and other a’s) will blame me for this, and imply I’m further complicating an already complicated situation.

Then I began to think: given how many things THEY have fucked up for me, all the procedure THEY lack, and the lack of coordination, transparency, and support, I absolutely cannot, not for a second, begin to accept blame. Its ALL on them. Any behavior I choose in a corner they backed me into is also on them.

I realized how much implicit guilt I’ve unknowingly carried for so long. Today, forcing myself to not accept any of it here, I felt a physical sense of weight lift off me.

‘Nos-tal-gic,’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word
in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ‘nostalgic’. ‘Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.’

‘Really, old fellow?’

‘Important. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this
world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again.
So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. In our house.’
He fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble.

‘Akira,’ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully
to articulate. ‘We should move on. We have much to do.’

It took losing her, and the journey losing her has placed me on, to teach me to love openly. After I learned this, I stopped being sparing with affection.

I would no longer deliberate before showing someone love. I wouldn’t give thought before messaging classmate who’s having a hard time at their clinical site offering my support, reaching out to an old friend to see if they’d like to get together, sharing a post of a school friend and I for their birthday.

This was an important lesson for me.

To live from the heart.

But the lesson that’s followed is to be sparing with my energy.

All things are an exchange of energy. Thinking about someone, communication, affection, its all an eternal exchange that will far transcend life.

In the process, I thought that if I do live from the heart, I’ll meet other people also living from the heart. And that I’ll bring out the best of each person, the same lovingness, and we’d have a loving connection (in any context).

But what I came to see, and I say this without cynicism, is that often I’d give so much of my heart but it’d go unreciprocated.

Reaching out to school friends over the summer who don’t reach out to me first. Checking in on acquaintances who I knew were struggling. Sharing with others who seemed down how I feel about them, the love I have for them.

Sometimes I knew how one-sided it was. “That’s not what this is about,” i’d tell myself.

“Being loving isn’t about the social context.”

Seeing messages left on “READ” or “SEEN” stung.

I’d offer to take classmates out sailing under the Golden Gate who I knew wouldn’t be able to go because they have partners, and it’s just… weird.

I feel embarrassed even writing some of this.

Eventually I felt like I was giving away so much of myself, the purest parts of myself, and what I was giving was unwanted.

I’ve come to learn that everything is an exchange of energy, and although I do know how important it is to live from the heart, I also think being thoughtful about who you share your love with ensures that your love, and your heart in which it comes from, is valued. There’s something disrespectful to the self about offering your purest parts unwantedly, again and again. It changes the love you have for yourself.

I have friends who’ll slump down against the wall and cry with me, and those are the ones worthy of my heart. The ones who offer theirs. This is where my own love is valued and respectful. Which, in term, strengthens the quality of the love.

It’s not about closing the heart again, especially since I had to lose so much and suffer greatly for my heart to open. It’s not about cynicism, pessimism, or hurt feelings.

It’s about being intentional with our purest parts. Our purest self.

Since learning this, my love has turned inward and it glows brighter.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from blackjack is that you can do everything right and still lose.

I knew my old high school friend, Cody, was getting married this summer. I was surprised I hadn’t gotten my invitation yet.

“His girlfriend probably isn’t letting him invite any of his friends,” my mom said.

“You didn’t receive an invitation because his fiancé holds is balls for him,”- my friend Andrew.

I reasoned either he wasn’t inviting any of the old gang, or he’s invited all of us and is just late on the invitations.

I have been very lonely lately. Each day is spent in my university library finishing the second draft of my book. The room I write from, “The Atrium,” is a large glass room that shows the USF cathedral, scathing landscapes of campus, and beyond the campus, San Francisco. Nobody is in the library during summer except for staff. And they all stay out of my little glass sanctuary. Sometimes the loneliness reaches a point, where when I hear someone enter the library (its that quiet), I get excited. I hope I then hear foot steps nearing the Atrium. To just “be” around someone else. But I don’t. On numerous occasions, it gets so lonely that I convince myself the silence is diving. Again and again and again. Like a black hole swallowing itself.

It would have been nice– more than nice to be able to be with the old group, even after how much time has passed, celebrating in Vegas. Hitting golf balls off the roof of a building in 101 F heat. A break from the silence that’s self-consuming.

They all still live in this same town. And even though our lives are a million miles a part, I liked thinking that if I was ever in dire need of company, they’d be there. That the past can act as a cushion. But it can’t. And they aren’t. A line in the sand has been drawn.

People have been dropping like flies lately, this is an extension of that.

And I am tired of guessing the endgame.

“The pain is stronger than ever. I’ve seen bits of lost Paradises and I know I’ll be hopelessly trying to return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I’m thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I’m going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and syntaxes of the countries I’ve passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I’ve never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.” – Jonas Mekas (“As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Glimpses of Beauty”)

― Jonas Mekas

Two years ago this time, the sudden and violent death of my best friend existed as a whole body wound. One that gushed blood nonstop. Two year ago this very evening, my beloved grandma would begin having chest pains and I’d race her to the emergency room as she had a heart attack. I sat there, clamming up in the unnaturally warm waiting room, with a face shield, N95 Mask, and gloves on given we were mid-COVID pandemic pre-vaccine. My best friend’s death still disillusioning, grandma possibly being the next on life’s chopping block, I sat in the clammy discomfort in utter astonishment of how cruel life can be. The night sky was red when on my drive home. She lived. But I won’t forget the fear, nor the inarticulable sense of cruelty and unfairness.

Two years later and I lay in more excruciating pain. I’ve lost three loves ones since then and the love of my life left me.

The misery rolls on.

The goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians.”

My friend asked my opinion about Instagram models who have tens of thousands of men drooling over them, in the comments of the photos they post. So I added five models and began following their posts and fan interactions to let an opinion fester over time.

I was reminded of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. In Lolita, a middle-aged professor named Humbert Humbert falls in love with a twelve year old girl, Lolita, who he later step-fathers. And after becoming sexually involved with Lolita, there’s a sense of desperate dissatisfaction within Humbert. He has Lolita’s body, but he discovers he’s after he heart, which he’s not acheiving.

I’m merely speculating when I say this, but I think the inverse may be true for these models. The most primitive desire amongst humans is acceptance and the greatest fear is rejection. And the purest form of acceptance is love, which manifests as sacrifice, honesty, and selflessness. I think there are a lot of people who think they have love, but are restless within their experience of it because it isn’t true love they’ve achieved/received. Congruently, I think a lot of these women yearn for a greater acceptance, but misunderstand lust as the love they seek. The attention they garner is primitive and impulsive (and borderline creepy) compared to the genuity of love. And they’re not satisfied because what they receive is conditional, given that it predicates upon aesthetics (which age), competitive (amongst other models), and these women are receiving the manifestations of an impulse rather than the warmth of man’s greatest gift. They achieve something adjacent to what they really want, and the further from the mark they are, the most the desire increases, which manifests in increase of content, which continues to further them from what they really want.

Stories of a Stoic

The day after Valentine’s Day, I went on a date with a girl named Natalya who i’d met on Bumble. We met at Fort Mason in San Francisco and walked five miles through Fisherman’s Wharf, had lunch, then walked back. On the walk she clarified that she was only interested in long-term relationships. I didn’t tell her, but I wasn’t. My life revolves around finishing my book, and i’m not willing to compromise that for anything, as lovely as she was. So I thanked her for the date, planning to go my separate way, but as the weeks went on she would message me every couple of days. We would spend the day talking, as we did this past Thursday night before she asked me out again. I finally confessed my current desire for short-term relationships, but told her how much I enjoyed her company and asked if we could be friends. I felt like she was fumbling when she quickly told me she didn’t like me romantically nor had she all along and only asked me out as a friend. I was bothered by this. She bellowed in laughter at every joke i’d made on our date, she suggested plans for the future, she asked me lots of questions about past romances, and she sent me a lot of messages during the month between that date and now. As a writer my objective is to collect observations, and as a psychologist it’s to culimate them idea into a conclusion. So whenever anybody wrongfully suggests I misperceived something, I get frustrated.

I was angry at her. I bitched to friends about how difficult women can be as I fought the impulse to be dismissive while she tried to nail down a date for us to hang out again (“as friends.”) I became more frustrated as the night went on, so I put my phone away and decided i’d speak to her the next morning. I didn’t like how my opinion of her as this esteemed and respected and enthusiastic person had slightly wilted when I considered how she’d most likely lied to me. But then I had a moment of clarity. Maybe after hurting somebody’s feelings, I can’t expect them to be at her most honest.

Then I began to think about Natalie, another former quasi-romance who’d earned her own Stories of a Stoic entry this past year. Towards the end of our relationship she began playing a lot of games. She would tell me about other guy’s she’d like to be with, experiences she’d like to have, and she would shoot down attempts to hang out with her but then invite me over half an hour later when i’ve already made plans. She left behind a sour taste that entirely consumed my opinion of her. Thursday night after I realized what I did about Natalya, I began thinking about Natalie whom I felt like i’d had similar experiences with, of her telling me something about the reality of us contrary to my perceptions. Then soundbites from her games began flooding back and I started to ponder why she acted that way. Soon a specific sound bite came back from when it seemed like she was going to abandon our limbo for a real relationship with somebody else.

“Why do you care? You’ve made it clear you would never date me.”

“I never said that to her!” I thought. But I did think it. I had a moment of clarity. I did think it. That was my entire mindset towards her. I did want to date somebody more attractive, equally as athletic as me, and somebody more conveniently located to me. And although i’d never say anything like that to a girl, i’m sure it manifested in my behaviors towards her. I took this deep breath, where I realized the responsibility I held in causing harm to another. My inner-monologue began:

“Maybe talking to somebody for two years and rejecting their commitment, their affection, their being, is hurtful. And maybe that hurt was felt as a kind of frustration that manifested through the games a person plays towards another who wants their conversation, but not their romance. Saying yes to her, but also no.”

I thought I had Natalie figured out after our last conversation. I thought Natalie was a bitch. Whether such an opinion should be revoked is something else i’ll also decide in time. But what I can decide is that I thought I understood everything at play when this happened, but I didn’t. It took two years of experiences I needed and reflection of the things I had before i’d learned what I needed to. And by evaluating honestly and thinking deeply, i’ve been handed another piece of the puzzle of what it means to be human.

Wagers of a Warrior

The brutal reality is that many boxers have been killed by non heavy-handed punchers. Meanwhile Deontay Wilder is arguably the hardest hitting boxer ever. It’s unlikely, but very possible, that his opponent of tonight’s long awaited rematch, Tyson Fury, is living his last day on Earth.

Regardless of me pulling for Wilder, I hope Fury doesn’t succumb to a fatality. That’s one of the two reasons tonight’s fight will be so hard for me to watch.

The second reason is because given that this sports means something to me, as it does all of its fans, these boxers are parts of my world. Boxing interacts with my concepts of fate, consequence, redemption, self-actualization, risk, and glory.

So when one of my boxers lose, given they’re parts of my world, my world tweaks. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. As does my relation to, and understanding of it. Andy Ruiz Jr. beat Anthony Joshua on June 1st, 2019 to become the IBF, WBO, and IBO Heavyweight Champion of the world. His upset victory coronated my last five weeks of training before fighting Phil Lo Greco. My muscles were huge, my stamina had never been better, and I was one of the hardest punchers of any gym I entered. Months after my fight, as Ruiz bought mansions and Rolls Royces and helicopters, I dated lots of girls, and raced my car around California, and spent my days writing my book in beautiful places. When Ruiz Jr. lost the Championships to Joshua on December 7th, my life consisted of treatments for all my boxing injuries, spending countless lonely hours of my life in dark rooms writing, and reflecting into the drab grey sky moodily. So when I penned in my journal: “I liked this world more when Ruiz Jr. championed it,” I meant it.

Sometimes my favorite boxer’s victories initiate phases in their lives congruent to mine, and their victory in my life isn’t causal but rather merely parallel. Sometimes the effects of a win or loss are causal. During Summer 2018 I was obligated to be in 300 hours of classes because a counselor made a mistake advising me of drop-dates. I became fatigued from the intensity of the courses during what was supposed to be my first break after being enrolled in classes year-round for two years. My honor’s streak was traded to fighting for high Fs. The sight of the same campus each day, five days a week, became grating on my eyes. I became anxious and depressed. And the counselor never vied for me to her superiors, nor was willing to admit her mistakes beyond the room. So when Golden Boy promotions robbed Gennadiy Golovkin of his victory against Canelo Alvarez in their awaited rematch that September, thus ending Golovkin’s career-undefeated streak and robbing him of his four championships, indelible shades of unfairness and corruption marked my sense of the world. That’s the effect these matches can have on fans.

The literal do-or-die consequences of tonight’s fight will change the courses of both men and radiate into the worlds of the millions who watch. I respect both men, but I sure as hell don’t envy them.

Stories of a Stoic

I was shocked to wake up and find out that Kobe Bryant had passed away. I was also shocked, then soon bothered, by the comments I found from goateed, sunburnt, Trumpists.

“One less rapist on the streets!”

“Not a real loss, he was a rapist!”

And other demeaning remarks. I haven’t followed basketball, nor did I know the man. I have no idea what he did or didn’t do. But that’s the point, it’s irrelevant to the mourning of him. There’s a concept from dialectics (echoed in Christianity) of duality. It’s the idea that two seemingly contradicting truths can operate simultaneously. Meaning a selfish person can do a charitable act, an honest man can lie, a person can love you and be toxic. It’s an important idea because it fractures the dichotomies of good and bad, right and wrong, etc that don’t accurately capture people. I’m not implying he’s a good person who did a bad thing, i’m saying a bad thing doesn’t render a “good” person a fraud. He’s a fraud if those moral truths are contradictory. But they’re not, and that’s where the people making those comments are lost.

The implication of those making derogatory comments is that if Bryant sexually assaulted that woman, he’s not worthy of being mourned. But a person being worthy of grief upon his or her death doesn’t predicate on moral evaluation anyhow, it predicates on whether the world’s natural reaction is grief. And here, it overwhelmingly is.

Those people also imply that if he were to have assaulted that woman, his death isn’t a tragedy. But that isn’t true either. A sport losing a hero, a wife losing a husband and daughter, four daughters losing a father AND sister, is tragic. A man dying at 41, alongside his 13 year old daughter is tragic. And nothing curbs that.

A stain on a man doesn’t constitute the man.

Again, I have no idea what he did or didn’t do. But it doesn’t matter. The idea that there’s reason to inhibit compassion is a brittle, mindless idea that actively hurts the world. And it’s a function of weakness and not strength.

As a boxer, I laud any athlete that’s championed their sport.

Rest in Peace Champion, Kobe and Gianna Bryant

Stories of a Stoic

When the decade began, all I wanted was security. But tacitly I knew that security came at the cost of the life I had really wanted, the one I was too shy to even admit to myself. A life of academic success, strategic risks, and unprecedented accomplishments. A few years later I understood that passivity was consequential, and i’d earn myself the antithesis of these desires if I didn’t make changes.

Then I did.

And now I have a capacity for excitement where once was comfort, risk for security, and vulnerability for certainty. Even on my worst of days I get to rise to the life that i’ve always wanted, and that’s priceless.

Understanding the overwhelming control over our circumstances gives us control itself. Believing we have little control over our circumstances forfeits control. Our beliefs about our limitations manifests those limitations. And one path leads to happiness and the other leads to everything opposing happiness.

So as we welcome a new decade, i’d like to kindly remind everybody that we’re ever only a few decisions away from the lives we dream of.

May your actions be as daring as your dreams.

Stories of a Stoic

I’d like to say something to my fellow people of summer.

To those who prefer the summer sun’s bask to a whirlwind of leafs.

Or heat to wind, watermelons to pumpkins, or an orange sun to a grey sky.

For those who’d rather don three layers of sun screen than two layers of sweaters, cold smoothies to hot chocolate, or white shorts to blue jeans.

And finally, to those who’s hearts also tremor at the sun’s slow death through autumn and into winter.

To you, I say this.

If it lives on your skin, or in your heart, if it’s intertwined with your soul, it lives.

How to handle people willingly leaving your life

(Stories of a Stoic)

Early in Fall of 2017, I met a nursing student from a private university one city south of mine. Natalie (pseudonym) and I instantly became close and shared daily conversation, constant banter, and that special connection rarely found. I was in a hiatus from a long-term partner Alice (pseudonym), and I did enjoy my new friend as a change from my girlfriend. Whereas Alice was impersonal, Natalie was nurturing. Whereas conversations with Alice was usually centered on her, Natalie constantly centered talk on me. Every dynamic of our relationship spoke to joy of a blooming romance. Except we really never graduated beyond that stage. After my two-year relationship ceased, I didn’t wish to find myself in another one. Natalie would try to advance things whereas I tried to tame them to best preserve what we had. Various social dynamics writers emphasize how when a woman is attracted to a man, and a man doesn’t accept those advancements, the woman grows bitter towards him. As this was the case.

Natalie’s passion for health care and healing speaks to her altruism and compassion. She wasn’t, and isn’t, a bad person. But I continued to regard our relationship as it were, while things seemed to grow sour from her end. Her advancements became more obvious, and my elusiveness became more emphatic. This culminated into a series of painful conversations that robbed us of whatever vitality we had together. Subsequent conversations were forced, interactions were strained, and our relationship was a far cry from what had been. But after finding myself without as many friends around, and out of a genuine care for Natalie, I reached out to her this past day. We began talking, but after a delay in her response, I fell into a trance of prophecy. I felt I was able to see her reply before she had sent it. I felt the words in my head, I saw the message being typed and considered what my immediate reaction would be. I received that message near verbatim.

I was washing my hands in the bathroom before dinner when I read this message. Immediately, I felt a sensation of surrealness surge through my body. My feet felt frozen, and my body felt heavy. Staring in the mirror, I felt the heft of my face weigh downward. But after a few seconds (that felt like minutes), I typed that response. It wasn’t a censored, edited, nor revised version of what I wanted to say. Those were the words that my mind immediately manifested, because they reflected what I know.

The Stoic response to these kinds of losses should be how one responses to natural circumstance. Human-beings may be easily influenced. And with a basic understanding of psychology, or an advanced understanding of social dynamics, one can influence another’s decision of this kind. But one never should. Because beyond the moral consideration, we as people are shrouded in originality. And our beliefs, ideas, experiences, idiosyncrasies are analogous to a beautiful harmony playing beneath our skin. This harmony doesn’t speak to all, but those who it does speak to are commanded by it. And as long as we are “good people,” and through respect, kindness, and a basic humanity ensure that we promote the happiness and healthiness of those we interact with (or at the very least, we aren’t a detriment to them), those who care for us won’t leave. It isn’t a matter of decision, it’s a matter of nature. So when other’s do leave our lives, as long as we’re generally good people, we can understand that this does not reflect our social attractiveness nor our worth. It reflects our how they valued us. We didn’t speak to them. The harmony playing within us didn’t interact with theirs. They didn’t “hear it.” Or they did, but it wasn’t “for them.” Because what attracts them is naturally different, and that’s okay. Romantic value doesn’t predicate on a hierarchy of worth. It predicates on a hierarchy of compatibility and relative attractiveness. A key’s value isn’t worthless because it doesn’t unlock all doors. Nor is man for not meeting the desires of all potential partners.

We should accept these losses with pride because our goal should be to live the healthiest, happiest, and most honest lives as possible. And there’s an inherent dishonesty in keeping people around as friends and partners who do not value you as others do, because a tacit principle of holding people close is that they too hold us close. They see us for what we are and they value what we are. So if another person discards our relationship, thus clarifying what they see and how they feel about what they see, this serves as a natural process to cleanse our circles of those who we aren’t meant for. And thus, those not meant for us. This process enriches our circles by ensuring those in our orbit are ones who are meant to be there. Because they hear the music we play and they like it.

What love is

Dear Readers, 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

And to those who are single, I’d like to say something.

Society has misconstrued romantic love and has certainly misunderstood love in general. What we believe to be romantic love is actually attachment, lust, and fear (of loss). Society preaches passion as a function of romantic love, and passion CAN be a function of love, but it functions where one demonstrates heroism, selflessness and sacrifice to benefit the life of another. It has nothing to do with touch nor sexual desire.

Love is everything. Life teeters on the spectrum of love and fear. Love is multidimensional, beyond the experience of mere emotion. Love is a hand extended to the shoulder of a distressed stranger, the smile of a child, it’s the gratitude towards something beyond ourselves when circumstance benefits us.

Anybody who has told you that you need another being to supplement your experience of love has misguided you. To live meaningfully is to celebrate love everyday.

(Stories of a Stoic)

Last week, I felt like a destroyer in the boxing gym. Tonight, I felt destined to be destroyed.

Nights like tonight capture life.

Tonight my new sofa felt warm and the gym felt cold.

The cute soccer moms were replaced by hard breathing, sweaty Latino guys.

The clumsy Russian with outlandish power seemed daring to hold mitts for last week, but nightmarish this one.

The host of awed kids who asked me how I kick so hard last week, had their airpods in tonight.

But I did tonight what I did last week anyway. I blasted the bag. Then the mitts. Then my sparring partner. Because boxing is analogous to life. Misfortune doesn’t wait until you’re ready.

It’s a matter of character, and not convenience, that you navigate the good times with the same grace as the bad.

This is the duty of a Stoic.

(Stories of a Stoic)

You will have days that are unkind to you. I had one yesterday for instance. And as it dragged on, I thought about Epicurus.

Epicurus was the first philosopher that I studied deeply. His philosophy predicates on pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. So when he found himself on his death bed, while various systems of his body took turns failing, he sought peace in the memories of his friends.

I feel that we too should live our lives in a manner as to which we have catologed memories of our adventures, heroics, laughter, and moments of deep love that we can retreat to when life circumstances rough us up.

There isn’t any matter too dark for us to kindle light in.

Dear readers,

Some years deliver great reward at little sacrifice. Problems are impersonal, pleasure is constant, and peace is persistent. For me, 2018 not one of those years.

That being said, a musician friend recently emphasized to me “the music between the notes.” The silence that can be just as loud as a guitar’s chord and just as meaningful as a piano’s melody. And I thought about how analogous this is to life. There are special moments between what we believe to be the important ones. A sympathetic hand extended to the shoulder of a distressed stranger. Moments of philanthropy. Acts of altruism. Receiving another’s compassion. These moments aren’t as glamorous as freshly kindled romances, financial advancements, new possessions, etc. But these are the true glories.

And I may have endured many rigors this year, but I enjoyed many of those glories too. And I hope that you can say the same.

Sidney Sheldon said;

“A blank page is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”

Well, a blank year carries the same responsibility and delivers the same promise. It’s an empty canvas, and you can fill with it what you wish. I only ask that you consider glory and legacy when go about doing so.

Reach for the heavens

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett

This quote has remained with me for years. I was reconsidering it’s implications yesterday in relation to romantic relationships. By describing anything as a failure, Beckett asserts a reality where reward/achievement predicates on a dichotomy. Win, loss. Good, bad. Victory, defeat. These dichotomies have their place (writes the Moralist), but they get applied too frequently (and thus inaccurately) throughout day to day life.

The dichotomy makes sense for learning new skills, conditioning abilities, and attempting new experiences. It’s easily (and accurately) applied to sporting events, but not completely nor as wholly as one would expect. In a boxing contest where an underdog displays unbelievably grit, adaptability, resilience, and strategy but ultimately shies of the win, is he a failure? If this contender secured a future in the sport at a championship level through a 36 minute opportunity before the world, but was bested on points did he truly lose? On paper he did. But he had also won so much; respect, adulation, confidence, and experience. He GAINED things, he LOST nothing. So if failure cannot exist dichotomously for a naturally dichotomous medium, where else does it fail?

I began reconsidering this quote yesterday in relation to the phrase “failed relationships” (romantic endeavors). People generally regard any relationship that sees a break-up or separation as a failed relationship. So if a failed relationship is one that meets its end, antithetically a successful relationship is one that does not end. We can dicotomize/quantify success and failure as being polar opposites because the only time we generally use the phrase of a failed relationship is when it ends. We don’t use the term to address abusive relations, unhappy partners nor mismatched people. This removes a grey area so we can posture the terms as wholly opposing one another.

We need to either deconstruct failure as a binary concept or narrow it entirely to the most basic of goal-based tasks (more narrowed that sporting competitions even) because failure postures all experiences as goal-based excluding any outcome as being positive other than the one we desire. This is a problem because it implies two false sentiments. Firstly, it implies that we know what’s best for us. Our desires are seldom examined, and even when one does examine them its hard to conclude that any one thing would wholly benefit your life. The best career position one is being considered for comes at the cost of added stress, more responsibilities, and more hours at the office. The supermodel-esque girl at the gym eyeing the lonely young adult causes that young adult to believe that consummating a relationship with her would positively benefit his life, unaware of the insecurities she would inspire, her immature tenancies she’ll navigate the relationship with, and her loose values. Similarly, I soldiered through two junior colleges on a warpath to earn admission to UC Berkeley, one of the most prestigious (and most conveniently located) universities in the world. In my pursuit, I disregarded the school’s staunch political stance, arrogant students, protests, riots, and the prevalence of violence and sexual assault. What could have been SO great about the school’s experience that it bestrides political intolerance, egoism, fiery rebellion, assault and rape? What exists within those halls to trump five facets of the experience all conducive to a poor academic experience? I couldn’t tell you, and that community-college student working fastidiously while claiming “It’s Berkeley or nothing” certainly couldn’t answer this question either.

Sociology has a concept called “symbolic interactionism,” which is the view of social behavior that emphasizes linguistic or gestural communication and its subjective understanding, especially the role of language in the formation of the child as a social being. The biggest mistake the social and behavioral sciences make is not applying this concept outside of sociology too. We as people evaluate others based off symbols. “What do you do?” begs an occupation that acts as a symbol correlating to an income, presitigousness, and required education that we relate with it. Asking a person about their occupation gives them symbols to understand them with. Luxury watches and car brands predicates on symbolic interactionism too. A mere symbol can communicate to others their income, and thus societal standing.

The executive who’s promotion continues to teeter on uncertainty desires a symbol (the prestigiousness of a higher position.) The lonely adult eyeing the attractive gym-goer desires a symbol (attractiveness via proxy). I wanted a symbol through admission to UC Berkeley (a symbol of intellect and academic excellence). We as a society interact with SYMBOLS. We do this firstly because we aren’t trained to understand people, things, or places abstractly and even those who find themselves able to do this will also find the task laborious if not insulated by congruent philosophies. Our relationship to symbols becomes most apparent through our desires. These symbols are seldom questioned and again, if we truly explore them we would conclude that we cannot claim any one thing would completely benefit our lives. Thus we do not know what’s best for us. My studies in theology, philosophy, and own religious convictions lead me to belief that we are on this planet to love, learn, and grow. The experiences we need to best do this drastically depart from what we think we need for us. What we actually need interacts with our psyche and our soul. What we desire (largely) satiates our ego.

The second implication of failure is that we need the entire experience of something to benefit from it. This is where we can retire Samuel Beckett’s rendition of failure completely. Maybe the executive who ultimately gets denied the prestigious promotion needed the experience of admitting to himself and the world that he desires this position. He feels he deserves it. But he also admits to those close to him his insecurities about how he will perform with the new skills, qualms over how qualified he actually is, and his anxiety that they will chose someone else. The experience of being a candidate alone requited/caused/catalyzed emotional honesty with himself, his loved ones, and the world around him. Others spent lifetimes unable to achieve this. Maybe THAT was the experience he needed.

I met a model-esque volley-ball player my freshman year of high-school and became infatuated with her immediately. I chased her throughout high-school as I endured the highs and lows of us becoming friends, her getting a boyfriend, me meeting other girls, circumstance forcing the boyfriend and I together for academic purposes, etc. I met excitement, failure, loss, and despair throughout those four years. At the road, we ended up at my house for prom photos and as my date proved to be a bad one, she wanted to step in. In front of all my friends and family, the girl I had desired for years wanted to be my offical date. We had our photos taken together in my backyard by the bay, she befriended my sister, and we spent most of the evening together. That day I actualized a theological virtue that I spent my first 18 years of life living without. Hope. That day, I learned hope. I never got to culminate a relationship with her, and truth be told I wouldn’t have wanted to. The closer we got, the emptier I realized her to be. She’s a sweet girl but deep thinking is not her forte.

I DIDN’T NEED THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE TO LEARN WHAT I NEEDED TO.

I needed part of the experience. And the person the experience was predicated on was irrelevant. Absolutely no disrespect intended to her, but any pretty face could have substituted the role. The girl didn’t matter. The lesson did. And that lesson instilled a virtue in me that evolved me as a theologian, theist, and human-being. A light switched on that day, and I interact more richly with myself, my world, and God because of it. Where was the failure in that?

Why call anything failure? Why not be grateful that you could do so much? We should realize that the experience predicates on the destination and not the journey, because even with the intellectual investigation of a philosopher or psychologist, we will still never fully understand the motivation for any one desire or goal. Nor can we conclude what’s best for us. But we can solider towards the desires we deem most noble, honest, and meaningful through strategy, patience, and discipline. The journey will investigate man and his limits. The destination will deliver lessons from nature and the divine.

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. And God said,

“Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.”

And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked.

“What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.”

“The red-headed man with the cement fists smashed you to shit, Junior.”

It was a juvenile message to send him, and a deviation from character, but I took pleasure in Chris Eubank Jr.’s loss after having his blithe arrogance shoved in fan’s faces for years. Last February he mockingly sank to his knees, tensed his shoulders, and scrunched his face like a gargoyle, stalking the aborigine Australian Renold Quinlan around the ring in an ominous precursor to his inevitable victory. The title they were fighting for, the IBO Super-Middleweight Championship, is not recognized as a legitimized title by any official boxing commission. But Quinlan needed it. As a champion, he had mandatory challengers. And with challengers for his belt, Quinlan was never short of opponents and thus fights. With constant opponents comes constant income. Quinlan used this income to fund care for his ailing parents in their impoverished aborigines’ province of Australia. Throughout the fight, Eubank toyed with Quinlan to suggest that the opposition he offered was comical. He toyed with him to suggest— no—- make clear that he would be compromising his career by breaking off a chunk of his legacy to mend it to his own. And he did, except he broke off more than a chunk. A battered Quinlan toiled into irrelevance and thus poverty shortly after the Eubank fight.

Then he fought the prideful legend, Arthur Abraham. Abraham has weathered battles with the best of his division, and at the end of his career wanted to cement his legacy with a win over a rising champion. Eubank found Abraham’s meek wraith just as laughable as Quinlan’s. He brutalized him too, finding time in-between relentless combinations to make faces, posture childish motions, and actually laugh at the German-Armenian legend as to make clear that his best days were behind him.

Aside the antics in these matches (and countless others), Eubank’s misdoings extend beyond the ring. He and his father try to leverage further agency over contests by emphatically voicing that “Junior’s opponents need to be protected,” urging early-stoppages from the referee (to save lives). This is a tasteless reference to his fight with Nick Blackwell, whom Eubank beat into a coma years backs (and who remains there). And outside of his boxing career, grainy videos can be found of an adolescent Eubank beating men in parking garages from a decade ago.

Chris Eubank Jr. is not a good man.

So when he had dispatched of his first two opponents in the Super-Middleweight Super-Six Tournament for the Mohammad Ali trophy, fans were conflicted. This conflict stems from negotiating his distasteful character with the truth that he thrashes his opponents from pillar to post until knockout, stoppage, or a unanimous decision-victory. People were forced to face the reality that he was the most probable victor, but sought comfort that his opponent in the semi-finals was George Groves.

Groves weathered two wars with legendary Carl Froch, beating him on many dimensions before they ever fought. The ambitious youth permeated the veteran’s psyche by predicting pieces of the match with absolute confidence. He would solve Rubik’s cubes as a nervy Froch would ramble nonsense during the press-conference, communicating his superior intellect. He would explain how Froch would be defeated, emphasizing how it would catalyze his own career’s rise and Froch’s demise. He compromised Froch mentally, shrinking the larger, more experienced man so the opponent he would face against would not be the truest and most formidable version. And it largely worked. Groves manifested his predictions verbatim.

“The match will start off as a battle of jabs and I will win.” Groves did.

“I am going to give him a taste of my straight-right, just a taste, early in the first round so he respects my power.” He did that too.

He also predicted “I will finish Groves with my left-hook” and he knocked him down with it twice.

Groves fell victim to a criminally premature stoppage loss, but displayed a body of work so impressive, and withstood punishment so unbearable, that his future in the sport was assured to be bright. He endured career highs and lows, battering Froch in a rematch until Froch (shockingly) knocked him out cold, facing a grueling Badou Jack on Mayweather’s undercard where he fought a sound fight, but shied of doing enough to cinch the win. But on a career high, last May on Kell Brook’s undercard he fought a technical match to win the WBA Super-Middleweight Championship. He has navigated his career, the good and bad, courtesy of an incredible boxing intellect, a powerful jab, and two concrete fists. He fights strategically, patiently waiting for his opponent to allow him the freedom to manifest his game-plan. And win-lose-or-draw, he always does. His few losses were not courtesy of a more-skilled opponent, but by deviating from his discipline.

Groves skills are not only reliable, but antithetical to Eubank Jr’s form of uncalculated flurries, ambitious power-shots, and lack of any real strategy. So as many fans sought comfort in the pedigree of Groves, other boxers voiced that if he even deviates from strategy slightly, he’s done. And to heighten odds, despite the wide body of boxers, promoters, and judges who voiced Groves as a favorite, bookies had it heavily tipped to Eubank. Eubank had been ascending for years while Grove’s career was far from linear. The Eubanks’ and their team convinced the world THIS was the height of Junior’s ascension. Their indoctrination techniques seemed to plague masses, as even Groves offered a Freudian slip in a interview where he accidentally billed Eubank the winner. Doubt was nursed as a budding seed in the mind of Groves supporters, warding anyone from confidently asserting Groves as the winner. But when it seemed this doubt plagued Groves too, the world was afraid he was entering a dangerous match compromised to the same vain and degree that Froch was against him.

“Ginger is getting slumped”, some fan wrote in an ominous forum post.

Ginger didn’t get slumped. Not in the slightest. The red-headed man with the concrete fists smashed Junior to shit. Groves fought a match so strategically sound that it paralleled the ingenious of history’s most adulated military commanders. The naturally larger, stronger Groves, maintained distance from Eubank whose style is to rush into his opponents guard and bombard with attack. Each time Eubank attempted this, Groves met him with a sharp, punishing left jab.

Groves nullified each attempt at a combination by killing the momentum immediately, courtesy of either evasion or attack. As Groves began to pick up steam he would meet Eubank with a strong jab, then a straight-right. Eubank would shudder in pain. We shuddered in perverse joy. In the early rounds, Eubank tried to permeate his guard and received a shot that tore his left eye-lid in two. Blood seeped over each of their bodies in clinches, Groves shoving him out of intimate contact and continuing a barrage of attack. This affair increased in violence as the cut grew, because as the cut grew Eubank became more desperate and even less calculated. Instead of coming forward and addressing Jr. as the assailant, thus playing into Eubank’s hand, Groves always allowed Eubank to make the first move. Eubank continued to make the wrong move. And in this gory chess-match, with each wrong move he further felt the brunt of his downfall. A campaign of fear and bullying, a house built on a foundation of arrogance, collapsed on Eubank before the world.

I have been offering assistance to a close friend who recently fulfilled his military contract and has begun a city-college with the intention of transferring to a university. Immediately upon hearing about his plans, I urged him to set his sights as high as possible, UC Berkeley. I couldn’t help myself. My journey to obtain admission to their university was less than idea, frankly because I failed to. But the journey itself was shrouded in strategic consideration; understanding which classes I need to take, what grade I need to obtain in each course to maintain the GPA necessary, and what guidance counselors and advisers I should most trust to help facilitate such plans. I deviated from strategy upon the final steps of applying, impulsively changing majors to something I felt would statistically increase chances of acceptance. This costed me direly, and while some may argue this postures me to be the WORST adviser to my friend, I believe it deems me as the most fitting. By inheriting my strategy and critiquing it, obeying by a discipline I ultimately betrayed, he could achieve something I was unable to. And I write this with the utmost sincerity, I have never wanted somebody to achieve something so badly that I was unable to.

I have recently hear him voice deeply concerning things.

“I don’t think i’m STUPID smart, but I am smart.”

“I mean, I will try. I won’t get my hopes up and i’m definitely going to have a back up plan, but I will try.”

These statements do not concern me because they note uncertainty in character (although that does bother me too), but because he attributes success to inherent ability. Upon my revisions of strategy, my life and other, I have deemed three qualities necessary to achieve anything in this world. Strategy, discipline, and patience. Obtainment of these three abilities, working harmoniously together, can deliver man anything he wants.

I wrote this to the same friend after I formed this theor—- realized these truths about life.

“I was going to type this in a letter to you but I couldn’t find the words or time. But I think this is very important.

I think that man does himself a terrible disservice by believing that he is so much less powerful than he is. People fail themselves. We think we are so limited in what we can manifest in our own personal lives and this world. We’re not. You and I could be professional fighters in a year’s time. We could be studying to be astronauts. We can literally leave this planet. We could be humanitarians traveling the world or we could open a brothel in Brazil and have an endless supply of women or race sports cars around Miami or become professional chefs. Or you could become an astronaut and me a humanitarian or vice versa.

People, not some people, almost ALL people approach their lives as if they’re helpless and at the mercy of life and circumstances. “I’ll go where the waves take me.” Well you, I, Felipe, Andrew, we can control the waves.

There is a finite amount of criteria to get into UC Berkeley. It isn’t some aimless pursuit where one is just throwing meat at a wall hoping it sticks. There is objective criteria that would deliver you into one of the most prestigious universities on the planet, thus changing your life forever and you are capable of achieving that. Patience, discipline, and strategy will deliver you whatever you want.

DO you remember Fedrich? Fredrich is overweight and grimy because he chooses to be. Every day he chooses behavior that supports that lifestyle. Tomorrow he could choose behavior that supports hygiene and health, but he won’t because he doesn’t think he can. Felipe was fat because he supported bad dietary habits until one day he didn’t. He decided not to eat junk (strategy), didn’t eat junk (discipline), and exercised patience because he wasn’t going to be gifted an improved body overnight.”

The failure to achieve anything comes at the cost of two things; compromise and doubt. Both Groves and I were both burdened with countless places to falter. Groves could have retreated into pity upon hearing half of the United Kingdom predicting the bloody conclusion to his career (doubt). He could have abandoned strategy mid-fight to pursue a knockout or stoppage of Eubank and thus devolve the bout from a chess-match to a fight, Eubank’s domain of expertise (compromise). But Groves did not falter with compromise, and I did. And the results speak to the potency of those two beguilements.

We saw with George Groves what we will see with my friend. Groves operated outside of the pageantry of the event, by disregarding what it means and instead focusing on what he needed to do (strategy), waiting until circumstance afforded him the opportunity necessary (patience), and ultimately executed just as he needed to (discipline). And as he was announced as the victor and launched in the air, he rested not on the shoulders of his trainers but the body of incredible work.

We create our own realities and you have just as much power to create yours too.

(The quip about a brothel was purely for levity, fyi)

Amir Khan’s arms flailed lifelessly as he collided into the canvas. The eyes of my friends darted to me, expecting another dramatized reaction that I was known for long ago. It was fitting that a response as animated as throwing a plate (my signature reaction) belonged to a spectacle as cartoonish as professional wrestling. But those days are retired far into my childhood, and a shallow sense of anger for my desired outcome not having been met was not what I experienced. My angst was real.

The idea of Khan’s defeat coming to him in such a graphic fashion was a fear that haunted me throughout the day. It intensified throughout the preliminary rounds of the match as I voiced my premonitions to the people surrounding me. “Danny, Khan is scoring more points.” “Canelo looks shaken.” “Khan’s speed is unmatched.” These were all phrases directed at me to ease some of the burdening anxiety that rested within. Such phrases felt like hollow attempts at trying to divert me from the hopeless situation that was going to follow. This offers insight as to why I was sent in a paroxysm of despair, grief, and fear at the sight of Khan’s demise. As his swollen eyes fixed directly above him while his trainers, promotors, and medical assistance crowded around, my eyes were also stared in a dazed state at something beyond me; the cruel nature of reality.

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s chiseled body dwarfed the UK native’s physique of lean muscle. He resides two weight classes above the much smaller challenger, as the welterweight divisions limits had to be augmented for Khan to even be sanctioned to fight. Canelo’s technique is virtually flawless and his 46 win record holds only one blemish (and to the best boxer in the sport). Meanwhile Amir Khan has been clobbered into oblivion countless times, and by fighters a lot less gifted than his most recent opponent. The fighter infamous for his reckless style and venerability to knock-outs faced the fighter who best capitalizes of recklessness and is notorious for knocking opponents out. This was far from a mere bout of pugilism, but rather a meditation on life. Amir Khan symbolized a contention of circumstance and an appeal to fate.

I opened up a blank word document on a drizzly November night and began to pen my personal essay to one of the most prestigious of academic institutions in the world; the University of California, Berkeley. Throughout two years prior, friends and family would offer a slight cringe when I explained my plans of obtaining my undergraduate degree through them. “I mean, you’re a really good student, Daniel. But Berkeley? Are you sure? Do you have a backup plan?” “I mean, you’re my son. You’re incredibly intelligent. But they are really hard to get into. Really hard.” These responses were indicative of my chances of acceptance, however pessimism was never my strong suit. If anything, the mere discussion of my acceptance to Berkeley breathed hope into my mind and heart.

At an early juncture of my high-school career, I held a weighted GPA of 1.5. Although I was able to perform decently moving forward, my introduction into college was rough to say the least. I continued a streak of failing grades throughout my first Psychology class before the professor seated me in her office and explained to me just how one is supposed to study. The idea that test-taking was a product of understanding material and not measuring answers, negotiating truths, and comparing options was foreign to me. I was able to salvage not just the semester, but also my college career, by taking her teachings to heart moving forward. I performed incredibly throughout the next few years, obtaining perfect and near-perfect grades throughout each semester that followed.

In a 2012 match, Amir Khan faced Danny Garcia for the championship of the 147lb division. They began the opening round exchanging a flurry of punches before Khan was stunned by an uppercut; his lanky arms flailing around as he crumbled to the mat. The audience watched on in slack-jawed disbelief as he answered the referee’s ten count, only to begin the second round on wobbly legs. He stumbled away from his opponent, gaining all the awareness he could before squaring up once again. Khan stood there protecting himself from the onslaught of close-quarters exchanges until he was well enough to offer reciprocity. He was knocked out once again. Inexplicably, Khan made it to his knees before the ten count. He continued toward Garcia, clearly disoriented. He utilized the speed that he was known for as he rejecting the notion of an inevitable defeat. “THIS FIGHT IS OVER, KHAN DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE THE LEGS!” An announcer screams. “But he’s got the heart. He’s got the heart,” another announcer quietly chimed in. Khan offered all that he physically could before he was slayed.

Both Amir Khan and I fall victim to the same tragic downfall. Our ability to achieve the excellence we strive to is a product of our relentless determination, however our actual achievability is hobbled by the shortcomings of our characters. As good of a student as I have become, I still do not operate on the level necessary for UC Berkeley. As motivated as Khan may be, his susceptibility to knock-outs is very much real. Year by year it proves to be central to his identity as a boxer and it is starting to seem as if it is a flaw of his inherent physiology as opposed to skill. It is the sole flaw that continues to compromise his career and threaten his legacy. As transformative as the previous years have been for the two of us, we did not grow enough in the time available to triumph over adversity and achieve our goals.

I sat in silence as I read the rejection letter. I was met with a slight sense of disappointment. The only reason this defeat was not half as crushing as I originally anticipated it would be was because life slowly eased me into the cruel nature of the situation. Month by month following the submission of my application, my hope waned in face of reality. The reality of acceptance statistics, transgressions in my transcripts, and the contrast in personality between current Berkeley students and myself. The most painful aspect of the situation occurred an hour after I read the letter. While at a family dinner for my sister’s birthday, my cousin turned to me in front of 12 other people, and muttered those six awful words, “Hey did you get into Berkeley?” I betrayed my virtue of honesty as I explained to him that I had yet to hear back. My girlfriend was one of the two people who knew the truth. Seated next to me, her hand slowly descended to my back for comfort as she offered a smile of sympathy. The very smile caused me more pain than the rejection letter itself. She was one of the many people who believed in me whom I had let down. I imagine this is how Khan felt as his trainer held him in his arms after Khan’s loss.

During those six months at which he started training and I awaited the acceptance decision, Khan offered me hope. And after I had lost my battle, I clung on to the hope that he would win his. I wanted him to win because it would have conveyed the idea that one can transcend circumstance and that reality is a mere illusion (and often times an uncompromising one). The implication of his defeat represented more than just another match in the loss column. It implies the notion that in some situations defeat is imminent. It implies that passion does not necessitate talent and desire does not necessitate obtainment. Among all else, it encourages my haunting fear that the girl my heart has swollen passionately for will most likely not be mine forever, and forces me to face the stark possibility that one day her embrace will belong to another man.

We are two dreamers; fantasists of out crafts. Our childhood whimsy afforded us the naïve hope that our passion was enough to manifest our ambitions into reality. But as Khan has his jaw realigned and I complete my transfer forms to UC Davis, we realize we were very, very wrong.

Written May 9th, 2016.

Unarguably the most controversial teaching of Judaism follows on page 73 of the Babylonian Talmud: “And these are the ones whom one must save even with their lives [i.e., killing the wrongdoer]: one who pursues his fellow to kill him [rodef achar chavero le-horgo], and after a male or a bethrothed maiden [to rape them]; but one who pursues an animal, or desecrates the Sabbath, or commits idolatry are not saved with their lives.” Originating from a text composed somewhere between the 3rd and 5th century, today the concept of the Rodef more simply explains that if a person is to pursue another with the intent of killing them, they are billed a Rodef. When one is aware of a Rodef, one bears the responsibility of killing this person if all other means of suppressing them prove ineffective. Because this concept is so abstract and deviates so greatly from the largely passive Jewish nature, many make the mistake of dismissing it as an idea that has no real world bearing. This is a terrible mistake since over the past two decades alone, the concept of the Rodef has resulted in various political and religious figures around the world being accused of blasphemous, treacherous, and homicidal behavior earning them this label. In a few publicized cases, contracted killings have taken place in order to exterminate the Rodef. In order to test the virtuousness of this concept, we must first examine the argument in logical form. First let us assume you recognize a Rodef. You decide to murder them (P). If you murder the Rodef, then you violate Utilitarian ethics (Q). You murdered the Rodef (P) therefore you violated Utilitarian ethics (Q).

In order to continue evaluating this concept to identify its ethical validity, it is imperative that we explain the terms germane to our argument. A conditional argument in Philosophy takes the form of an “if… then” statement. It is composed of two pieces, an antecedent and a consequent. The antecedent is generally followed by the “if” whereas the consequent is followed by the “then.” For example, “IF you murder the Rodef, THEN you violate Utilitarian ethics.” I must also explain the concept of the “negation.” Essentially, a negation falsifies a given proposal (which is symbolized using: ~). It is also of great value to the paper to understand what a disjunction is. A disjunction is determined by an “or” (‘V’ in logic). It is highly important to understand that a disjunction can solely be accepted as truthful only if one of the other parts of the disjunction is true as well. Lastly, the Principle of Sufficient Reason states that “In seeking to understand a point of view whereby we seek to understand the view in its strongest, most persuasive form before subjecting the view to evaluation.”

In order to maintain my integrity as a philosopher, I must effectively apply The Principle of Sufficient Reason to all aspects of the argument. In order to do that, I shall start by examining the negation of the consequent. If you murder the Rodef (P), then you do not violate Utilitarian ethics (~Q). And to further weigh out the ethical considerations of this concept, we must begin by understanding the ethical model that is being applied. Utilitarian ethics are largely regarded as a very stable and sufficient means of identifying the ethical considerations of any one act or multiple actions based off how much happiness or unhappiness it achieves. This is because Utilitarianism does not aim to dictate behavior through established dogmas or principles that are left unexplained or unjustified, but rather focuses on making ethical judgements based on the net result of any occurrence. When carefully examining the original text, one can come to the realization that the intended purpose of the passage was to prevent rape, murder, the slaughtering of animals and to maintain respect for both God and the Jewish tradition. Saving both innocent by-standards from murder and their families and friends from the agony and despair of losing a loved one would qualify as altruistic behavior, as well as attempting to prevent the murder of animals and the raping of women and children. And the aspect of the text that pertains to the Rodef applying to those who desecrate the Sabbath and commits idolatry could very well be in order to keep one skeptic from causing other believers a separation from God and the Jewish faith. In this instance, the concept of the Rodef would be justified under the Utilitarian ethical model.

Because Utilitarianism judges the ethics of an action based off the overall outcome, it makes it challenging to factor in the means of which the outcome was achieved. But one must also factor in the consequences of the means in spite of the overall outcome. If the original text was purposed at preventing murder (amongst other atrocities) and the modern interpretation largely focuses on a Rodef being someone who pursues another with the intent of murder (disregarding animal killing, rape, idolatry and disrespect of the Sabbath), then is it not hypocritical, contradictory, and counter-productive to prevent murder with murder? Somebody pursuing another with the intent of killing them would be a Rodef. But by definition, the person who pursues this person is too a Rodef. And so is the person who pursues him. A doctrine originally brought into creation to prevent killing is going to result in a much larger number of deaths solely because the concept self-perpetuates. In theory, this could take generally peaceful societies and devolve them into lands of savagery, barbarianism and violence. And if the net result is a largely maximized number of causalities and an endless cycle of murder, death, and lawlessness then the concept of the Rodef would fail to be supported by Utilitarian ethics.

Although the Rodef may have been an idea that was composed to prevent daily monstrosities, the true ethical judgement lies in whether or not the concept serves as something that prevents murders versus an idea that perpetuates them. If a society were to live under this concept, then the idea behind the Rodef could possibly be effective at preventing murders, but once one murder is committed then a cycle of murder is begun that very well could wipe out the population of that society. The resulting outcome is not one that maximizes happiness or well-being, but would rather be that of mass-murder. Therefore, the Rodef is unethical under Utilitarian ethics. In the words of Leon Trotsky, “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”